Rachel Simmons At TEDxWomen On Girls And Self-Esteem

On Thursday in New York, at the TEDxWomen Conference in midtown Manhattan, Rachel Simmons hosted a presentation about girls and self-esteem.

Simmons is the author of "The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence." She also runs the Girls Leadership Institute, which teaches girls between the ages of 7 and 18 how to be emotionally resilient and rebound from hardship and challenges.

HuffPost Parents sat down with Simmons to talk about the difference between raising a strong girl versus a strong boy. We delved into the topic of cyber-bullying and found out how a parent might monitor their daughter's online behavior -- without turning into her her stalker and losing trust in the process.

For Simmons, the challenge is in learning how to raise young women who personify resilience -- girls who move towards conflict and learn to persevere, rather than spend their lives shying away from it.

Comments

[flatbedford]

02:27 PM on 12/03/2011

There is a 'curse' on 'good' boys too....being shunned by 'friends'.....I wonder if someone has done a retroactive study on these 'good' kids as to professional success later on in life?

[pipetoe]

01:50 PM on 12/03/2011

What is wrong with not-trusting your kid's decisions; and telling them so?
I have heard this negativity to "non trust" for years... Some kids have to have more guidance in gaining trust; and I think that should be right out in the open.

[roseau]

12:56 PM on 12/03/2011

Why are parents afraid to act like parents? If you don't want to be unpopular with your kid, read their text messages and you will find out that they already disrespect you. That's the irony - my kids' friends who have those 'cool' parents who never meddle in their privacy or take away the electronics as a punishment or to limit social problems are the very kids who treat their parents like garbage. My kids has had the lowest access to all of these things and has the fewest social problems of all her friends. It's not because we're so amazing, it's just a simple dynamic everyone is trying to have to avoid dealing with. Too many parents are playing out their own teen years trying to have their kids be as popular as they weren't.

[pipetoe]

01:54 PM on 12/03/2011

I agree with you. My kids are in the thirties now (well three of them, on is 22); and the same was true when they were teens. They didn't have cell phone's then; but it was about cars... They shared one old clunker, while there were many friends driving new cars that they got for their 16th bdays. Go figure...I think many parents would buy them to feed their own egos more than to make their kid happy. My 22 year old did not have a cell phone or a computer until he went to college.

[frank day]

12:43 PM on 12/03/2011

But who will get my sandwich?

[orbs]

12:34 PM on 12/03/2011

Why the constant division between young girls and boys? Or, women and men for that matter.

Our genders are two-sides of the same coin. How about...showing and teaching ALL our youngsters how to conduct themselves as they mature into adulthood?

Keep on excluding boys and men...you're going to keep on getting the same result as when girls and women were excluded.

[frank day]

12:42 PM on 12/03/2011

Who is excluding men?

[orbs]

12:51 PM on 12/03/2011

This site is.

[blackjacki2]

01:22 PM on 12/03/2011

Males and females are just plain different. For example women are much more likely to have self-image issues and develop eating disorders. There's nothing wrong with talking about women and not men or talking about men and not women.

[orbs]

01:37 PM on 12/03/2011

That's highly mistaken. Men, have self-image issues out the yang.

And while I find nothing wrong with speaking of one and not the other...this site, flat out excludes men from several topics while never applying the same standard to women.